here is a line from my /etc/fstab

/dev/hda7 /mnt/vfat vfat umask=000,noauto,user 1 0

on my vfat patition with umask set at 000 I get these results. I am using an equation to demonstrate.
xxx(original permis.)-000(umask)=777(new permis) in that example xxx would equal 777. In reality the permission with out umask is 744. The math does not work. What am I missing?

here is an excerpt from the man pages

"The umask is used by open(2) to set initial file permis-
sions on a newly-created file. Specifically, permissions
in the umask are turned off from the mode argument to
open(2) (so, for example, the common umask default value
of 022 results in new files being created with permissions
0666 & ~022 = 0644 = rw-r--r-- in the usual case where the
mode is specified as 0666)."

in their example mode is set at 666(is that for files?) isn't 777 used for directorys?.

Um, just from raw inticnt, it says NEWLY CREATED FILESYSTEM, and it seems that you are mounting an existing filesystem at startup, so, the permissions should for vfat should be that everyone can read it, that's what vfat/fat32/fat16/fat filesystems are, open for everyone. So, just set it up normally, and see if that works first.